ON FLUNKING RETIREMENT
Does every apassionata flunk retirement? I’m tottering on the cusp again, it seems. But this time, wholly intent on leaving behind the grimy world of bureaucrats, committees, and politicians, I’m poised to fly into a world of my own creation. Can I do it? Will I do it?
Flunking retirement means never having learned the most important one-syllable word in the English language: No. It means feeling guilty when pressed by well-meaning people. It means that sinking feeling in your gut when you realize you’ve just signed on to another huge commitment…in time….which means another huge commitment of loss…in time…towards what you really want to do.
So here I am today….thinking, writing, musing, trying to figure it all out. And I’m suddenly finding myself in that comfortable place William Faulkner called “middle-aging.” Not actually old, not actually young, but being sort of where Merlin was in his young Arthur years. Which, according to what I know about Merlin, was a real good perch in time, curiously and fabulously enlightened by varied perspectives (such as the inner world of fishes and owls and hawks).
So now I’m faced with the question of what to do with these, umm, varied perspectives from the high perch atop this hilltop of middle-aging. How best to sort them out, make sense and value of them, shape them into words of philosophical wisdom, or perhaps even better….philosophical good humor?
Here, gentle reader, is where you and I shall try to Zen forward….
Zenning out…
I shall try to assemble these ephemeral vagaries a day at a time, even perhaps a moment at a time, as I happen to find myself in the midst of the light of revelation or the agonies of reality. But whatever happens, it’ll be a good ride…. going straight to what the heart knows and understands as ultimate truth (based on wild and varied perspectives, of course).
Views from Annie's Cabin 